"Other tenets which we hold are that to chatter, and to do nothing but chatter, concerning our differences is not worth the trouble, seeing that it is a pursuit which merely leads to pettiness and doctrinairism; that beyond question are our so-called leaders and censors not worth their salt, seeing that they engage in sheer futilities, and waste their breath on discussions on art and still life and Parliamentarism and legal points and the devil only knows what, when all the time it is the bread of subsistence alone that matters, and we are being stifled with gross superstition, and all our commercial enterprises are failing for want of honest directors, and the freedom of which the Government is for ever prating is destined never to become a reality, for the reason that, so long as the Russian peasant is allowed to go and drink himself to death in a dram-shop, he is ready to submit to any sort of despoilment."
"You have decided, then, you feel conscious, that your true métier is to apply yourselves seriously to nothing?"
"Even so," came the sullen reply, for Bazarov had suddenly become vexed with himself for having exposed his mind with such completeness to this barin.
"You have decided merely to deny everything?"
"We have decided merely to deny everything."
"And that you call Nihilism?"
"That we call Nihilism." In Bazarov's repetition of Paul Petrovitch's words there echoed, this time, a note of pride.
Paul Petrovitch knit his brows.
"So, so!" he said in a voice that was curiously calm. "Nihilism is designed to combat our every ill, and you alone are to act as our saviours and our heroes! Well, well! But in what consider you yourselves and your censorious friends to excel the rest of us? For you chatter as much as does every one else."
"No, no!" muttered Bazarov. "At least we are not guilty of that, however we may err in other ways."